The present invention relates to lighting, and particularly to a lamp, e.g., an automotive lamp having one or more colors applied to its lens using a thermally transferred decal. The invention also relates to this lens and to methods for producing the lens and the lamp assembly.
Lenses for automotive lamps are generally molded from polycarbonate or acrylic polymers. This practice has been successful for clear or colored lenses. However, modern automotive styling has created a need for a combination of clear and colored areas in a single lens. One example of such styling is a lens having an amber reflex within a clear lens.
Attempts have been made to produce a colored area and a clear area within a single lens by separately molding the colored shape, inserting it into a second mold, and molding the clear portion of the lens around it, a practice called "insert molding" in the art. However, insert molding is labor intensive, adding to the cost of the lens. Further, single color or clear lenses are typically overcoated with a protective, abrasion resistant, hard coating. An insert molded lens, however, cannot similarly be overcoated because of microcracking and failure of the overcoating at the interface of the colored insert and the clear portion of the lens.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a single lens of one or more colors and a lamp assembly, e.g., an automotive lamp assembly using such a lens that overcome the disadvantages of the prior art.
It is another object of the invention to provide a lamp, e.g., an automotive lamp, as well as a lens for such a lamp, having one or more colors applied to the lens surface using a thermally transferred decal and a protective coating over the color layer.
It is yet another object of the invention to expand automotive styling possibilities by fabrication of an automotive lamp lens combining colored and clear regions, or more than one colored region, that could successfully be overcoated with a protective, abrasion resistant coating.
It is still another object of the invention to provide methods for producing a lens of one or more colors and a lamp assembly including such a lens that use thermal transfer technology to apply a color layer to the surface of the lens.